PERMIAN FUSULINID ASSEMBLAGES AND STRATIGRAPHY OF THE TRANSCAUCASIA

The Permian sequence of the Transcaucasia, which comprises the Davaly, Asni, Gnishik, Arpa, Khachik, and Akhura Formations, is described. A precise dating of the formations based on the analysis of fusulinid assemblages is also provided. The Davaly Formation corresponds to the Bolorian Stage of the Lower Permian (Cisuralian); the Asni Formation corresponds to the Kubergandian Stage, and to the lower half of the Murgabian Stage of the Middle Permian (Guadalupian); the Gnishik Formation corresponds approximately to the upper half of the Murgabian Stage; and the Arpa and Khachik Formations represent the entire Midian Stage of the Middle Permian. Only the uppermost Chanakhchy Beds of the Khachik Formation are referred to the upper series of the Permian (Lopingian), based on the latest proposal of the International Subcommission on Permian Stratigraphy concerning series boundaries. The Akhura Formation encompasses the Dzhulfian and Dorashamian Stages of the Upper Permian. Refined correlations between the Permian sequence of the Transcaucasia and the most complete Permian sequences of the Tethyan region (Central Iran, southestern Pamirs, South China, Japan ) are presented. The transgressive overlapping of the Permian deposits is recorded in these areas, similar to the Transcaucasia. Although the transgression began during the Bolorian, it reached the widest extent in the Kubergandian and therefore, in most sections the transgressive series begins with deposits of Kubergandian age. The Middle and Upper Permian deposits of the Transcaucasia, Iran, and southern Turkey belonged to a single carbonate platform. Similar extensive carbonate platforms are recorded in the southern parts of Afghanistan and China. A change in the sedimentary regime was recorded in all these platforms at the boundary between the Guadalupian and Lopingian epochs. The Guadalupian time was marked by the intensive accumulation of biolitithic and detrital limestones produced by benthic organisms, mainly algae and foraminifers, whereas in the Lopingian time, carbonate and clayey micritic deposition dominated, and the role of nectonic-planctonic and nectonic organisms, such as cephalopods and conodonts, increased. The sedimentation change was abrupt and caused probably by the short-term post-Midian regression. The change resulted in a significant biotic crisis when larger fusulinids, goniatitids and agoniatitids, tabulate corals, most rugose corals and other organisms became entirely extinct. These events marked the onset of the Late Permian "Great Extinction", which ended at the Permian/Triassic boundary. Nine paleontological plates show the main fusulinid assemblages. Nine new species are described: Codonofusiella (?) vediensis, Chalaroschwagerina davalensis, Pseudofusulina arpaensis, P. araxensis, P. pjatakovae, Rugosochusenella davalensis, Misellina (Misellina) caucasica, Cancellina armenica, and Sumatrina vediensis.&nbsp

PERMIAN STRATIGRAPHY AND FUSULINIDS OF THE TETHYS

The diversity curve of Permian fusulinid genera shows two peaks corresponding to the Asselian-Sakmarian and Midian times. The minimal generic diversity is recorded in the late Bolorian. The most significant extinction events occurred at the end of the Midian (71% of all genera), Bolorian (48%), Asselian (27%) and Sakmarian (23%) ages. The fusulinid assemblage was most notably changed by the appearance of new genera (52% of the total number) in the Kubergandian age. These data  identify two main stages (Asselian-Bolorian and Kubergandian-Dorashamian) and four second-order stages (Asselian-Sakmarian, Yakhtashian-Bolorian, Kubergandian-Midian, and Dzhulfian-Dorashamian) in the Permian history of fusulinids. The main stages correspond to two Permian series of the East European scale, which can be considered as subsystems named Cisuralian and Tethysian, respectively. The latter are subdivided into the Uralian, Darvasian, Yanghsingian and Lopingian series which correspond to the second-order stages. The scale suggested does not contradict the traditional two-member subdivision and has an advantage over the accepted global three-member chronostratigraphic scale because the series suggested are more proportional to each other in scope and reflect natural evolutionary processes of the marine biota. In addition, the application of the global scale to the Tethyan sequences is hampered by a limited number of criteria used in the drawing of series and stage boundaries, as evidenced by the existing different views on the position of the lower Guadalupian boundary in the Tethyan sections.&nbsp

CARBONIFEROUS-PERMIAN STRATIGRAPHY AND FUSULINIDS OF THE EAST IRAN. GZEHELIAN AND ASSELIAN DEPOSITS OF THE OZBAK-KUH REGION

Deposits of the Gzhelian-Asselian Stages were recognized by fusulinid occurrences in the upper part of the Sardar Formation (Zaladu Member) of the Ozbak Kuh region, East Iran. These deposits cannot be referred to the Bage-Vang Formation, which contains Bolorian fusulinids of the early Permian and lies at the base of a trangressive carbonate sequence. The results obtained in the Carboniferous-Permian section of East Iran are similar to those of western and southern Tethys. Everywhere the Asselian and, locally, the Sakmarian deposits are closely related to the Upper Carboniferous ones. After the late Sakmarian.Yakhtashian regression, carbonate platforms were formed from the Bolorian time through the Late Permian. The Zaladu Member contains 10 genera – Rauserites, Kushanella (?), Schellwieina, Anderssonites (?), Praepseudofusulina, Quasitriticites, Ruzhenzevites, Paraschwagerina, Pseudoschwagerina, Sphaeroschawagerina (?), and 37 species and subspecies of fusulinids. New species and subspecies are described: Rauserites infrequentis, R. tabasensis, R. fusoides, R. inobservabilis, R. (?) persicus, Quasitriticites iranicus, Ruzhenzevites zaladuensis zaladuensis, R. zalanduensis brevis, and R. ferganensis curtus.&nbsp

STRATIGRAPHY AND FUSULINIDS OF THE KASIMOVIAN AND LOWER GZHELIAN(UPPER CARBONIFEROUS) IN THE SOUTHWESTERN DARVAZ (PAMIR)

A detailed fusulinid biostratigraphic zonation of the Kasimovian and lowermost Gzhelian in southwestern Darvaz is proposed. Based on the investigation of five stratigraphic sections, five local fusulinid zones were established. These zones correlate with their chronostratigraphic equivalents in the East-European Platform and in the Urals, Arctic and Carnic Alps regions. Eighty-seven species and subspecies, which belong to 18 genera and 7 families of fusulinids, were identified in the Kasimovian and lowermost Gzhelian of Darvaz. Among them, two genera (Kushanella and Darvasoschwagerina), one subgenus (Tumefactus), and 24 species are new ( i. e. Fusiella segyrdashtiensis, Quasifusulina pseudotenuissima, Protriticites putrjai, P. compactus, Obsoletes darvasicus, Schwagerinoides (Schwagerinoides) pamiricus, Schw. (Tumefactus) oblisus, Montiparus kushanicus, M. rauserae, M. pigmaeus, M. memorabilis, M. citreum, M. hirsutus, M. dubius, M. stuckenbergiformis, M. desinens, Triticites umbonoplicatiformis, T. licis, Rauserites concinnus, R. jucundus, R. darvasicus, Kushanella globosa, K. insueta, Darvasoschwagerina donbasica)

FORAMINIFERA FROM THE EXOTIC PERMO-CARBONIFEROUS LIMESTONE BLOCKS IN THE KARAKAYA COMPLEX, NORTHWESTERN TURKEY

&nbsp

A brachialis muscle rupture diagnosed by ultrasound; case report

Trauma to the elbow caused by lifting heavy objects frequently involves rupture of the tendon of the biceps brachii muscle. Less frequently a rupture of the brachialis muscle occurs. To our knowledge, only five cases involving traumatic rupture of the brachialis muscle were described in the past 20 years. We will briefly report these cases

Geometric quantum computation with NMR

The experimental realisation of the basic constituents of quantum information processing devices, namely fault-tolerant quantum logic gates, requires conditional quantum dynamics, in which one subsystem undergoes a coherent evolution that depends on the quantum state of another subsystem. In particular, the subsystem may acquire a conditional phase shift. Here we consider a novel scenario in which this phase is of geometric rather than dynamical origin. As the conditional geometric (Berry) phase depends only on the geometry of the path executed it is resilient to certain types of errors, and offers the potential of an intrinsically fault-tolerant way of performing quantum gates. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has already been used to demonstrate both simple quantum information processing and Berry's phase. Here we report an NMR experiment which implements a conditional Berry phase, and thus a controlled phase shift gate. This constitutes the first elementary geometric quantum computation.Comment: Minor additions at request of referees. 4 pages revtex including 2 figures (1 eps). Nature in pres

Location-dependent threat and associated neural abnormalities in clinical anxiety

Anxiety disorders are characterized by maladaptive defensive responses to distal or uncertain threats. Elucidating neural mechanisms of anxiety is essential to understand the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. In fMRI, patients with pathological anxiety (ANX, n = 23) and healthy controls (HC, n = 28) completed a contextual threat learning paradigm in which they picked flowers in a virtual environment comprising a danger zone in which flowers were paired with shock and a safe zone (no shock). ANX compared with HC showed 1) decreased ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior hippocampus activation during the task, particularly in the safe zone, 2) increased insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activation during the task, particularly in the danger zone, and 3) increased amygdala and midbrain/periaqueductal gray activation in the danger zone prior to potential shock delivery. Findings suggest that ANX engage brain areas differently to modulate context-appropriate emotional responses when learning to discriminate cues within an environment

Incommensurable worldviews? Is public use of complementary and alternative medicines incompatible with support for science and conventional medicine?

Proponents of controversial Complementary and Alternative Medicines, such as homeopathy, argue that these treatments can be used with great effect in addition to, and sometimes instead of, ?conventional? medicine. In doing so, they accept the idea that the scientific approach to the evaluation of treatment does not undermine use of and support for some of the more controversial CAM treatments. For those adhering to the scientific canon, however, such efficacy claims lack the requisite evidential basis from randomised controlled trials. It is not clear, however, whether such opposition characterises the views of the general public. In this paper we use data from the 2009 Wellcome Monitor survey to investigate public use of and beliefs about the efficacy of a prominent and controversial CAM within the United Kingdom, homeopathy. We proceed by using Latent Class Analysis to assess whether it is possible to identify a sub-group of the population who are at ease in combining support for science and conventional medicine with use of CAM treatments, and belief in the efficacy of homeopathy. Our results suggest that over 40% of the British public maintain positive evaluations of both homeopathy and conventional medicine simultaneously. Explanatory analyses reveal that simultaneous support for a controversial CAM treatment and conventional medicine is, in part, explained by a lack of scientific knowledge as well as concerns about the regulation of medical research

Complete quantum teleportation using nuclear magnetic resonance

Quantum mechanics provides spectacular new information processing abilities (Bennett 1995, Preskill 1998). One of the most unexpected is a procedure called quantum teleportation (Bennett et al 1993) that allows the quantum state of a system to be transported from one location to another, without moving through the intervening space. Partial implementations of teleportation (Bouwmeester et al 1997, Boschi et al 1998) over macroscopic distances have been achieved using optical systems, but omit the final stage of the teleportation procedure. Here we report an experimental implementation of the full quantum teleportation operation over inter-atomic distances using liquid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The inclusion of the final stage enables for the first time a teleportation implementation which may be used as a subroutine in larger quantum computations, or for quantum communication. Our experiment also demonstrates the use of quantum process tomography, a procedure to completely characterize the dynamics of a quantum system. Finally, we demonstrate a controlled exploitation of decoherence as a tool to assist in the performance of an experiment.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. Minor differences between this and the published versio